decarbonisation – Progress in Research

Improving sustainability and safety of critical infrastructures with AI

Posted on 14/12/202306/08/2024 by Erik Franco

Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to support decision-making, and increasing efficiency and safety in the operation of critical infrastructures. This is the aim of the European project AI4REALNET – AI for REAL-World network operation, funded by the European Union with almost 4 million euros, through the Horizon Europe programme, and by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) of Switzerland with 2 million euros.

The project, led by the Portuguese research institute INESC TEC, involves the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, and the Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering of the Politecnico di Milano, and partners from France, Germany, Netherlands, Swizterland, Sweden and Austria, and promotes the collaboration between Artificial Intelligence and humans. The aim is to ensure that AI emerges as a way to support faster decisions made by human operators, creating conditions for the decarbonisation of the energy and transport sectors.

The project aims at improving the safety and resilience of critical infrastructures, which are becoming more challenging, not only due to the increase in the volume of information, but also due to the changes imposed by decarbonisation. The AI4REALNET consortium
Prof. Marcello Restelli, project coordinator for the Politecnico di Milano

With the involvement of industry, the project will promote awareness of the benefits of reinforcement learning and explainable machine learning. The project will also resort to current open-source AI-friendly digital environments, e.g., Grid2Op, Flatland, and BlueSky to foster and advance a global AI community.

HERCCULES: decarbonization project coordinated by LEAP

Posted on 17/02/202306/08/2024 by Erik Franco

HERCCULES has started, an international research project stemmed from an ambitious idea by researchers at LEAP (Piacenza Energy and Environment Laboratory) and Politecnico di Milano. The consortium made up of 23 partners will work for 5 years with the aim of demonstrating the feasibility of the entire CO₂ Capture, Utilisation and Storage chain (CCUS) in the regions of southern Europe with a high industrial density, in this case in the Po Valley and Greece. The primary focus is the decarbonisation of cement production and waste-to-energy, two strategic sectors for the circular economy.

The project intends to trigger concrete actions to contain CO₂ emissions. It will aim to accelerate the application of the CCUS in Mediterranean Europe, leveraging on the transport and storage initiatives already under construction in Italy and Greece and developing innovative capture technologies that are not only efficient, but also particularly flexible and replicable, in order to be adaptable to the technological evolutions of the reference industrial sectors.

The technological, infrastructural, safety, regulatory and financial aspects will be addressed with a multidisciplinary approach, which will allow the creation of industrial communities capable of exploiting the synergy between the processes of the CCUS supply chain. Universities, research centers and consulting companies will develop business models of HERCCULES technologies sized for future full-scale applications.

Finally, one of the objectives of HERCCULES will be to improve information on the CCUS theme: communication experts will organize educational and training events to communicate methodologies and technological solutions with schools, stakeholders and policy makers, with the aim of accompanying the transition of our industrial sectors towards a sustainable future for the European environment and economy.

HERCCULES was funded by the program Horizon Europe and has the support of numerous industrial partners. The application of CO₂ capture technologies is an essential element for the achievement of carbon neutrality by 2050 based on the scenarios outlined by the European directives and the recommendations of the Commission itself.

CONSORTIUM PARTNERS
LEAP (coordinator), EU CORE Consulting (Italy), Energan Oil&Gas (Greece), Buzzi Unicem (Italy), Titan cement (Greece), Sumitomo SHI FW (Finland), Air Liquide (Italy), Fraunhofer ISI (Germany), Politecnico di Milano (Italy), BCG (Italy), CSIC (Spain), Celitement (Germany), Università di Utrecht (Netherlands), Wietersdorfer Alpacem (Austria), Artidek (Ukraine), Shogenergy (Estonia), Università di LUT (Finland), TPI (Italy), ClustER Greentech (Italy), CRES (Greece), A2A Ambiente e A2A Spa (Italy), ENI (Italy).

Reducing atmospheric CO2 with ECCSELLENT project

Posted on 16/01/202306/08/2024 by Erik Franco

The project “ECCSELLENT – Development of ECCSEL – R.I. ItaLian facilities: usEr access, services and loNg-Term sustainability” aims to strengthen Italian research facilities in the field of carbon dioxide capture, utilisation, transport and storage.

This is a particularly important topic with regard to the efforts to mitigate climate change: alongside improving energy efficiency and harnessing renewable energy sources, CCUS (CO₂ Capture, Utilisation and Storage) technologies have also been identified as a strategic measure with a view to reducing carbon emissions.

For three years, the ECCSELLENT project, which has been created as part of the European ECCSELL network, will be responsible for developing new technologies and research infrastructure in the field of CCUS, while simultaneously encouraging access to and enhancing the services and sustainability of the laboratories in the network that already operate within the CCUS sector, making it possible to reinforce scientific excellence and providing the national research system with the tools necessary to promote the decarbonisation of industry, one of society’s biggest challenges.

ECCSELLENT will be financed by 16.5 million euros from the Ministry of Universities and Research as part of NRRP Mission 4 “Education and Research” – Next Generation EU. The partners, coordinated by the National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics – OGS, are the University of Bologna, the Politecnico di Milano (in partnership with LEAP, the research centre founded by the Politecnico di Milano which operates in the energy-environment sector), ENEA and the National Research Council of Italy (CNR).

Thanks to this important project, the Politecnico di Milano will be equipped with a mobile experimental system for carrying out applied research activity relating to CO₂ capture processes which are crucial for the decarbonisation of hard-to-abate industry sectors,
Manuele Gatti and Matteo Carmelo Romano, professors at the Politecnico’s Department of Energy